Renaming

I love the way families have special words, usually coined by the children. We call a billfold a bofield thanks to our oldest son. He also gave us smell-good for cologne, as in “Dad, can I wear some of your smell-good?” Our daughter renamed the elbow the bowain. And, yes, we do still use these words, but we try not to do it in public.

Right now, I’m reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and she shares a couple of her family’s special words:

In a few months we’d be drunk on the scent of Lizzie Webb’s mock oranges and lilacs, but the show begins modestly in April with her tiny Lenten roses, white–petaled snowdrops, and the wildish little daffodils called jonquils that have naturalized all over the grassy slopes. As Lily and I walked single file up the path to the greenhouse, I noticed these were up, poking their snub, yellow-tipped noses through a fringe of leaves.

“Oh, Mama,” Lily cried, “look what’s about to bloom—the tranquils.”

There went the last of the needles of ice around my heart, and I understood I’d be doomed to calling the jonquils tranquils for the rest of my days. Lily is my youngest. Maybe you know how these things go. In our family, those pink birds with the long necks are called flingmos because of how their real name was cutely jumbled by my brother’s youngest child—and that was, yikes, twenty years ago.

Ah, the joy of children and language.

Gleanings from My Readings

"We do not look in our great cities for our best morality."
---Jane Austen

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“Nearly all of us . . . are offended by violations of some kinds of linguistic taboos. Political conservatives tend to be more offended by profanities and obscenities, whereas liberals tend to be more offended by racial and ethnic slurs as well as by slurs against homosexuals. Pinker says that words are arbitrary labels and that linguistic taboos embody a kind of magical misconception about language. In fact, though, speakers within a linguistic community typically show widespread agreement about the relative offensiveness of words. Linguistic taboos are real, then, not magical.”
---Gilbert Youmans, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Missouri, in a letter to the editor of The Atlantic (Jan/Feb 2009)

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“[Both my mother and the librarian] taught me that if you insist on having a destination when you come into a library, you’re shortchanging yourself. . . . I have found sanctuary in libraries my whole life, and there is sanctuary there now, from the war, from the storms of our families and our own minds. Libraries are like mountains or meadows or creeks: sacred space.”
---Anne Lamott, in Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

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“Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.”
---William Hazlitt, in his essay “On Wit and Humour”

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“Language is to some extent tendentious. This is what we have to work with. Think of words in terms of foodstuffs: whatever we cook up won’t be composed of pure nutrients: it will derive from odd life-forms that breathe underwater of grow in the ground. But we can use fresh, organic ingredients, we can wash contaminants off them, and we can avoid globbing them up with heavy batter and frying them in oils that clog our arteries. Actually, it’s a lot harder to do that with words than with trout or carrots, but it’s the goal for an honest writer to aspire to.”
---Roy Blount, Jr., in Alphabet Juice

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Happy Reading!

Gleanings from My Readings

“Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”
---Jane Austen, in Persuasion

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“Few of us have the temperament of monks. Most of us draw sustenance from the human drama. We might recognize the tremulous signals emanating from some invisible inner universe, but most of us see no choice but to live in the world, to engage in commerce, to seek delight in people and things around us. Perhaps when we knock wood to preserve our luck, what we’re really doing is convincing ourselves of the solidity of the present, distinguishing the actual from the wishful.”
---Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat Gazette columnist

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Actual title of new workout video: Bollywood Booty. I’m not kidding. Not only will this video help you “stay fit and get firm,” it will also “help you release your inhibitions.” Isn’t that what everyone looks for in a workout?

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“To me, letters have always been a robust medium of sublimation. I don’t remember what I was like before I learned my ABC’s, but for as long as I can remember I have made them with my fingers and felt them in my bones.”

“I do hope you realize that every time you use disinterested to mean uninterested, an angel dies, and every time you write very unique, or “We will hire whomever is more qualified,” thousands of literate people lose yet another smidgen of hope. And please promise me you will never lose your grip on the subjunctive.”

---Ray Blount, Jr., in the Introduction to Alphabet Juice

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“The problem with God—or at any rate, one of the top five most annoying things about God—is that He or She rarely answers right away. It can take days, weeks. Some people seem to understand this—that life and change take time. . . . I, on the other hand, am an instant-message type.”
---Anne Lamott, from Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

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John Donne’s “A Hymn to God the Father” (1633):

I.
WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,

Which was my sin, though it were done before?

Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run,

And do run still, though still I do deplore?

When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;

For I have more.


II.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won

Others to sin, and made my sins their door?

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun

A year or two, but wallow'd in a score?

When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;

For I have more.


III.
I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun

My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;

But swear by Thyself that at my death Thy Son

Shall shine as He shines now and heretofore:

And having done that, Thou hast done;

I fear no more.

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Happy Reading!

Cajoling Myself

No, I’m not writing this post just because I want to use the word “cajoling,” although it is a great word, isn’t it? Say it out loud. See? It even sounds like you’re giving yourself a pep talk, kind of like poking yourself in the ribs. And it has a happy sound. You’re encouraging yourself, not beating yourself up (that would be “manhandling” or “coercing.”)

Okay, enough about words and down to business. I’m actually writing this post because this morning, I realized something about myself. I’m not organized or disciplined or driven to achieve. I simply cajole myself through life.

Today was weightlifting day, something that comes around about three times a week for me. Some days, I really enjoy it. I’m eager to begin, and each lift feels great. My body feels fit and strong. I am joyously alive. I even feel a little righteous. Today was not such a day.

I told myself, “Just do your run, and if you don’t feel like lifting, you don’t have to.” Of course, this is a sneaky move. First of all, it gets me in my exercise clothes and out the door, which is half the battle. Then after my run I’m already sweaty, so I can’t use the excuse that I don’t want to get that way. I told myself, “Well, you might as well go ahead and lift a few weights. If you want to quit after the first set, you can.” Then, of course, it was “Well, just one more set.” Then, “You don’t want to be a quitter, do you?” And finally, “Come on. Just one more set! Think of all those hump-backed little old ladies you see in Walmart who struggle to lift their groceries from the cart to the checkout. You don’t want to end up like that do you?” And before I knew it, I was done.

See, it wasn’t will power. I just cajoled myself through it, a strategy I knew would work because I’d done it before. And not just with workouts.

I got through my undergraduate years this way. I was driving two hours one-way, with three children at home, and when I’d get overwhelmed, I’d tell myself: “You can quit tomorrow, but you’re not going to quit today. All you have to do is what’s required today.” And I didn’t quit. Certainly I’ve gotten through my doctoral program by cajoling myself. “Wow, that’s a really long checklist of really hard requirements. Maybe I can’t do this. Well, I’ll just get through the coursework and worry about the rest later.” When it got time for my comps reading, it was: “Just start the first book. Okay, check. Now the next one . . .” And writing papers? “Okay, just do the research. Now an outline. Just write an introduction . . .” I plan on completing the dissertation using the same method.

Writing teachers always say to stay away from clichés, and I understand why. They are “tired language,” and writers want to be original and striking. But clichés become clichés because they are true to life. “The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.” “Inch by inch, it’s a cinch. Yard by yard, it’s too hard.”

Works for me.

Breaking News: Scientists Validate the Metaphor

I read the other day about a recent scientific experiment. The scientists chose a group of people, secretly divided them into thirds, put them in a room, and instructed them to mingle. One third was “in the know,” one third was a control group, and those of the last third were the subjects of the experiment.

The “in the know” group had been instructed to treat the control group normally but to stare down, ignore, snub, and generally be rude to the subjects of the experiment.

Afterwards, both the control group and the subjects were interviewed about their experience. Among other questions, they were asked to estimate the temperature of the room. Those who were treated rudely consistently rated the room as colder than the control group.

From this, the scientists concluded that metaphors like “an icy stare” and “the cold shoulder” corresponded to actual physiological reactions, and were therefore valid.

My reaction to this newsworthy achievement? Boy, I could have saved them a lot of time and money.

As Promised

As promised, here are the ten most-difficult-to-translate English words. According to the same source, they are:

1. plenipotentiary
2. gobbledegook
3. serendipity
4. poppycock
5. googly
6. Spam
7. whimsy
8. bumf
9. chuffed
10. kitsch

There are some pretty interesting words here. Some of them are just plain fun to say, but I bet you’ll have to have a dictionary for a few of them. I did.

OK. I have to admit that I can't help but wonder why anybody would even eat Spam, much less speak about it in a situation that has to be translated. Maybe they are warning newcomers to our great country: "Enjoy yourselves. Live it up. But whatever else you do while you're in America, don't eat the Spam!"

Sunday Funnies

A linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But there isn't a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative."

A voice from the back of the room retorted, "Yeah, right."